


Strange Families

by Aaron_The_8th_Demon



Series: The Future Is Not Set [2]
Category: Terminator (Movies), The Terminator (1984)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Death Fix, F/M, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-21 04:01:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17635643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaron_The_8th_Demon/pseuds/Aaron_The_8th_Demon
Summary: Even with the terminator gone, there's still no sense of safety. Maybe there never will be again.





	Strange Families

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Naril](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naril/gifts).



> I'm gifting this to Naril because *No Fate* got me to finish the work that precedes this one.
> 
> You can read them both together, or read this one without having read that one first. Or you could just read this one without reading that one, but I recommend reading them both because these are two of the only things I've written that I genuinely like as whole products. Most of the time I write something and then immediately start picking holes in it until there's nothing left that I'm okay with, but I didn't do that with these two.

This place was making her paranoid - every so often there would be police officers entering the ICU, but they never came over. Sarah would still try to hide Kyle’s face whenever she saw them though, any way she could, by fluffing his pillow or kissing his forehead or any other mundane-looking action that wouldn’t seem like she was trying to hide him.

Kyle could barely wake up for a few minutes, forget about being mobile enough for them to sneak out of this place. He was covered in tubes and bandages, too, and tied to a bunch of those machines that bleeped with each heartbeat or read numbers she didn’t understand.

When they’d first been taken here, Sarah had needed stitches in her left leg where she’d been speared by a piece of debris, but otherwise only had bruises. The doctors took one look at Kyle and rushed him off to surgery, where he stayed for almost six hours. The ordeal was more or less over for her (at least for now, so long as nobody had figured out Kyle got arrested and taken to that police station the terminator burned down), so this long lull gave her time to think. Instead of thinking, Sarah spent most of it crying. Her friends were dead, she was in pain, and Kyle was on some table being cut up and sewn back together.

Once Kyle was out of surgery, he’d been taken to intensive care, and at first they wouldn’t let her see him - he was very weak and in critical condition and blah-blah-blah. So Sarah had started crying again on purpose, whining to the doctor that Kyle was her boyfriend and she couldn’t bear to be without him or something equally ridiculous, and they’d let her in with the understanding that she not try to wake him up because he needed to do that on his own.

Now, though, it’d been five days, and Kyle could stay awake for slightly longer periods each time he came to. He spent those minutes arguing with her, telling her it wasn’t safe here and they needed to go. Or at least that she did, because it didn’t matter what happened to him as long as she was out of danger. Sarah’s counter to this was that it _did_ matter to her how he was doing, and right now he wasn’t strong enough to escape. They’d have to wait until he could actually get up and walk without passing out.

Speaking of which. Sarah was watching through the door of the room as another patient was brought into intensive care when Kyle squeezed her hand and grunted. His eyes opened and found hers, and the first words out of his mouth were very predictable.

“Sarah… gotta leave…”

“Shhh,” she whispered, using her other hand to fluff up and smooth down his hair. “You’re still not strong enough.”

“It’s not safe here…”

“It’s safe enough. The cops are still looking for the ‘terrorist’ who destroyed that police station,” Sarah told him. “They’re not looking for you.”

“You should start planning,” he insisted. “Find a way to get out.”

“I’m not going anywhere without you.”

“I’m not important…” Kyle raised his head a little and tried to sit up, but couldn’t. The effort left him breathing hard and in obvious pain.

“Stop that, you need to rest,” Sarah insisted. She grabbed the cup of water off the side table and lifted his head for him, careful of the nasal oxygen tube that was hooked behind his ears. “We’ll go when you can get up on your own.”

When Kyle stopped drinking she put the water aside and took hold of his hand again. He was obviously trying as hard as he could to stay awake, to be alert, even though there was nothing he could possibly do if something happened. His eyelids were fluttering a little.

“Need to… come up with a plan…” Kyle trailed off and fell back asleep.

Sarah wondered if there was something in his medicine that made him keep passing out. Now that it’d been a few days, at least she’d mostly stopped worrying that when his eyes closed it meant he’d die soon. She lifted his hand and kissed the backs of his fingers, thinking. Kyle did have a little bit of a point. She should come up with a plan for when he was well enough to be snuck out of the hospital.

The next three days were a lot of the same: arguing about leaving, nurses checking on Kyle at really inconvenient times, and leeching from the ball of cash in his trench coat’s pocket so she could eat out of the vending machines in the lobby. Just once, she tried to call her mother from a pay phone, but there was no answer and when she got back to Kyle’s room he’d come to and panicked while she was gone. After that, she didn’t try it again, and waited for him to wake up so she could tell him she was going to get food. Sarah didn’t know what to make of his conflicting ideals - in the practical sense, he wanted her to run for safety and not stop until she found it, but in the emotional sense he was terrified of losing track of her. Phone incident aside, though, the biggest change over those three days was that Kyle (likely through sheer stubbornness) was staying awake for a few hours at a time and starting to move around more than he probably should.

While he was accomplishing this, Sarah paid attention to what the nurses did and said - Kyle was on some kind of antibiotic, but now that he was able stay awake most of the time it didn’t need to be injected anymore and he could swallow it in pill form. She asked, very conversationally, what antibiotic they were giving him, and at eleven that night when the floor was less populated she managed to steal a blister pack of it.

At quarter to ten on the ninth night of Kyle’s stay in the hospital, the chance presented itself: a patient was coding, and it was an excellent distraction. Kyle was already awake, even. Sarah got him back into his clothes and shoes (closing the front of his coat to hide the blood on his shirt) and they left the ICU. The important thing was not to look like they were in a hurry, because if they were both just walking normally, people wouldn’t notice them.

Kyle at least made it out of the parking lot before he stumbled and did a faceplant. He was pale and sweating, breathing hard, but Sarah managed to drag him up so they could keep going. They’d need to leave LA… maybe her mom’s house in Big Bear? Sarah didn’t know how the hell she’d explain this to her mother, but she couldn’t think of anything else. Maybe it would turn out okay…

“Yeah, right,” Sarah muttered to herself. Kyle had most of his weight on her and was just barely conscious, so she figured he wasn’t listening. “That’ll be a fun conversation. ‘Hi mom, this is Kyle. He’s been shot by a killer robot from the future and we’re running from the cops. We’ve only known each other two weeks, but I’m already in love with him. Can we stay here a couple days?’”

Apparently Kyle’s injuries thought that was stupid, too, because his feet dragged and he collapsed again. Sarah crouched by him and shook his shoulders a little, but he’d passed out. She ended up sitting on the sidewalk holding him upright against her shoulder, waiting for him to wake up and hoping like hell nobody would drive by and ask if they needed help. A couple cars did pass, but nobody stopped.

When he finally revived, Sarah’s legs had been numb for awhile, but she was able to get Kyle back on his feet and they were moving, a little more slowly. Eventually they ended up hitch-hiking again; Sarah didn’t have a car and couldn’t hotwire one, and even though she’d seen Kyle do it before he wouldn’t be able to right now. It was eerie, finding another run-down motel to stop at, but this time instead of building pipe bombs Kyle dragged himself onto the bed and was immediately out of it.

Sarah pulled his shoes off and struggled him out of his coat, then tried to take stock of things. She had ten doses of antibiotics for Kyle, but they’d probably need bandages and stuff, too. Not to mention food. If they walked for most of a day, they were within reach of her mom’s place, but Kyle was too weak for that. She’d make him rest for now (even if it meant tying him down to stop him from trying to keep going) and it would give them a little time to figure things out. Looking through the cash, there was a little less than 80 dollars left if they had to pay for a second night in the motel. Where the hell had Kyle gotten all this money?

Sighing, Sarah took off her own shoes and climbed onto the bed as well to cuddle up on his left side. She lifted the bottom of his shirt, but there was no blood leaking through the bandages, so she thought that was probably a good thing. Sarah put an ear to his chest and listened to his breathing and heartbeat, reassuring herself that he was still alive, and several hours later startled herself awake. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but even a crappy motel bed was better than napping upright in a hospital room chair - and worrying so much was exhausting.

Kyle was awake too when she looked, and then she realized she’d grabbed him around the trunk and her arm was pressing into his wound. Sarah sat up, snatching her hands away. “I’m sorry, did I hurt you?”

“It’s not bad,” Kyle answered, which was the same thing he’d said the first time he was shot and also such an obvious lie that somehow it almost became funny.

“You know if you’re miserable you can say something, right?” Sarah asked, eyeing him as she got up and put her shoes back on.

“It’s not important,” Kyle insisted. He was shaking a little. “Could be worse.”

She realized that he was in a lot more pain than he had been when they’d left the hospital - well, of course he was. They’d been putting strong painkilling drugs into his IV, and now he didn’t have any at all. It was kind of amazing he could even talk to her, because in Kyle’s place Sarah would’ve been curled into a ball sobbing. Which reminded her - he needed his antibiotics.

The cabinets in the kitchen were mostly bare, except for a dusty coffee mug that she rinsed three times in the sink before filling it with water. Sarah popped one of the pills out of its blister, then helped Kyle sit up on the bed - even going slowly, he was hissing with pain through his teeth. He at least managed to swallow the pill and most of the water, then she carefully lowered him back onto the mattress.

“How much does it hurt?” she asked, pulling over a pillow for him.

“When I’m sitting up,” Kyle wheezed, “it’s like an ammo can’s hanging off my ribs…”

“Okay…” Sarah realized there really wasn’t a whole lot she could do about this. He’d needed his liver sewn up and would be suffering for awhile. “I’m going to go get some first aid stuff, okay? I’ll be back soon.”

“Okay,” he nodded.

After asking someone outside, Sarah got to a Rite Aid in about a ten minute walk. Bandages, tape, neosporin, tylenol. She wished you could buy morphine at pharmacies, because tylenol would only be a little more helpful to Kyle than getting kicked in the teeth. On the way back she picked up some junk food from a convenience store, and once she came into the motel room she was surprised that Kyle was off the bed and drinking out of the sink faucet. He was still shaking with pain, worse than before, and Sarah wanted to make him lie down again but she needed to look at his wound and make sure it hadn’t ripped open from one of his many falls after leaving the hospital.

“Here, have some of these.” She opened the the tylenol and dropped a couple into his hand. “They might help.”

“I’ve been burned,” Kyle informed her after she’d gotten him out of his shirt and was carefully unwrapping the bandages. “This isn’t as bad… it’s just in one spot, the burns were all over my back.”

Well, that explained the scarring Sarah had seen there. It made her sad for him - even once he’d healed from this, the reminders of all his past pains would still be there forever. It was adding to that tally of hurts.

When the gauze came off, they both looked over his stitches. Kyle knew a lot more about this stuff than she did: “It’s not inflamed… that’s good.”

“What happens if you get an infection?” she asked, smearing neosporin over the spot. Maybe talking would help distract him.

“It’ll get swollen,” Kyle answered through ground teeth. “Pus might leak out. I’ll have a fever.”

“How long until this is healed?”

“Probably a few more weeks.” His eyes were squeezed shut and his face was turning red as she started wrapping him in fresh bandages. “As long…” A hiss. “Long as it doesn’t get infected.”

“There.” Sarah taped the end of the gauze wrap in place. She was shaking now, too, because she’d made his pain worse. “Okay, you can lay down again.”

Kyle managed, somehow, to get on the bed and situate himself into a reasonably comfortable looking spot. Sarah threw away the bandage wrappers and settled next to him again - his breathing was slowing back down. He was so tough, even in horrible pain and passing out constantly, but as soon as she kissed him, he melted. This wasn’t like the starved, desperate kisses from before; it was tender, a quiet moment of connection and reassurance.

Sarah leaned her head into Kyle’s shoulder, feeling him gradually go limp as he fell asleep. She was still thinking, trying to come up with an explanation that wouldn’t send her mother into a fit once they got there. A reason for Kyle, and for why Kyle was so badly hurt but not in a hospital where he belonged. It made Sarah realize she should probably try to call her mom again, but Kyle had an arm around her and she didn’t want to wake him up. As long as he slept, he wasn’t in pain.

When Kyle woke up after a couple of hours, Sarah managed to get him to eat - apparently in his time most food amounted to various forms of rat or old, stale K-rations. The idea of potato chips was completely foreign for Kyle, but after trying the first one with a curious expression he’d promptly devoured the entire bag and decided that he’d need to get his hands on more once he was feeling better. It was endearing to watch him stuff his face with Lay’s, and Sarah was glad she’d been able to introduce him to something fun despite the circumstances.

“We have enough money to stay here for another night,” she informed him once he’d finished eating, still licking salt off his fingertips. “And then hopefully we can get a ride the rest of the way.”

“We shouldn’t wait that long,” Kyle argued. It would be more convincing if his whole body wasn’t trembling from the agony of sitting upright in bed. “Those police might find us…”

“You need to rest some more,” Sarah insisted. “You keep passing out and you’re always in pain, that should tell you something.”

“I’m supposed to keep you safe…”

“From what? The terminator’s gone, I crushed it to death in a machine.”

Through the pain, Kyle looked fairly impressed at that. “The pipe bomb didn’t do it?”

“It was just a torso and an arm… I got it to crawl after me into a press.”

Kyle nodded. “I think… I think John said something about that, once. He was talking about it to me right before I got sent. It was confusing at the time, but I guess you told him about that at some point…”

When he trailed off, Sarah thought he was about to pass out again, but he didn’t. Instead he looked like he was being strangled.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. It’s not important.” He leaned back and dropped to the mattress a little too quickly, grunting when he landed.

“Don’t do that, Kyle, you’ll hurt yourself worse… come on, what’s wrong?” Sarah went over and sat on the edge of the bed, fluffing his hair with her hand.

His eyes deliberately turned away from her and he looked more vulnerable than he had bristling with tubes and wires in the hospital. Kyle was blunt, but at least he was honest. “Someday you meet John’s father. After that you don’t need me anymore. I’ll just be stuck in this time by myself.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Sarah answered quietly. “You were with me for the worst two days of my life, and there’s nobody else I can ever talk to about it.”

“But John…” He finally looked at her again. “Maybe something else happens to me between then.”

“Kyle, stop,” Sarah insisted. “If you die after everything that’s happened, I’m going to kill you.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

She shook her head, not wanting to think about either being with somebody else or Kyle dying and especially not both at once. She’d acted whimpery to the doctors and said he was her boyfriend in order to be allowed to his room, and then while being sarcastic to herself said she was in love with him… but really, both of those things were true. For all intents and purposes Kyle was her boyfriend, and Sarah did love him. It made her wonder a little… what if Kyle…? No, if Kyle was John’s father, surely he’d know about it, right?

“I don’t want you to die,” Sarah repeated, still playing with his hair. “And I don’t want you to go anywhere, either.”

“But John needs to exist,” Kyle insisted.

Sarah really, really didn’t want to think about this right now. She stroked the backs of her fingers along his jaw - spending so much time helpless, he needed a shave. But even feeling emotionally crushed, with a hospital-induced beard and stitches in his forehead, he was strangely wonderful. Really, Kyle was perfect in his imperfection, because once you got past that terrifying intensity he’d first had, there was an obvious caring in his green eyes that he wasn’t sure how to express. Instead, he just looked at her like she was the most important, precious thing in the world. He would and almost did die before letting anything happen to Sarah.

“You should try to relax,” she told him finally. “We can talk about this later… just try to focus on getting better, okay?”

She punctuated the request by kissing him, hopefully alleviating some of his doubts. Kyle kissed back like she was the air he needed to live, and Sarah figured that if he wasn’t so badly hurt this would’ve progressed further. With his injuries, though, he was too weak, and that just gave her another reason to hope he’d heal quickly. It’d been wonderful to be so close to him, then, even though at the beginning he’d kept looking utterly shocked that it was actually taking place. It was bittersweet how he was always surprised by nice things happening for him; on the one hand, it made her sad that his life was so horrible before he’d been sent here by her future son, but on the other, there was something satisfying about getting to introduce him to said nice things, be it as important as lovemaking or as insignificant as a bag of potato chips.

Sporadically, Kyle did keep trying to talk about it, but Sarah diligently redirected him each time with anything she could think of because she didn’t want him to be so anxious. It would only use up the energy he needed to heal, after all, and he already had enough issues without the patched hole in his torso. Finally, though, the thinking and worrying wore him out and he fell asleep again. Sarah used this lull to try calling her mother a second time, still getting no answer. It was starting to seem weird, but once they got to her mom’s house there would probably be a pretty good reason why.

After maybe an hour of slumber, Kyle - for no reason Sarah could think of - began muttering and twitching in his sleep. She went back over and reached for his hand, which was apparently a mistake because he startled awake with a yelp and sat up suddenly enough to cause himself severe pain. Breathing in gasps and clutching his torso, Kyle flopped over onto his side and curled up a little. He almost looked like he didn’t know where he was.

“Kyle?” Sarah slowly reached out again, resting a palm on his shoulder. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” he wheezed, releasing the bottom of his ribs to cover his face with both hands. “Just remembering.”

He was sweating, now, and she wasn’t sure if it was from pain or whatever horrors lived in his mind that caused it. “What were you dreaming about?”

“I went face-first into a crashed FK,” Kyle mumbled. “It’s how I got the scar on my chin.”

Sarah brought him some water, and while he drank it she rummaged the convenience store bag and came up with something that might help him feel better. “Here, eat these, they’ll help.”

Kyle eyed the package suspiciously: “What’s a Pringles?”

“You’ll have to open it and find out,” she teased.

He pried off the lid and actually looked relieved to see a fresh supply of chips inside. The cramming commenced, but at least she managed to steal two from him this time. The Pringles calmed him down a lot, and Sarah decided she’d just have to keep a stash of potato chips on-hand for him when they found a safe place to hide for awhile.

“We should go tomorrow,” Kyle insisted for the hundredth time after he’d finished eating.

“You need to rest,” she repeated in response.

“We’ll run out of money. We should go tomorrow.” He struggled out of bed with an agonized expression so he could take more tylenol and drink from the faucet; Sarah had a hunch he did it mostly to convince her he was mobile, even though the pain it caused him was obvious.

After another repetitive argument, the reason Sarah agreed wasn’t because of whatever points Kyle made, but instead the fact that she was sick of fighting with him over this. In typical Kyle fashion, though, he didn’t look triumphant about it, only relieved. He had so little ego compared to most of the men Sarah had met in her life, which certainly didn’t hurt her opinion of him any. For him, nothing existed outside of her safety, not just because her son was humanity’s last hope against Skynet but also because he loved her.

Sarah was starting to understand that the nature of Kyle’s words and actions were a duality. Most of the time, he was an advocate for the practical, building explosives and avoiding police. But there was also an emotional component, too, which he was either forcing down or didn’t know how to express (or both), because he couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to her even if it hadn’t been his mission. Kyle was a strange and tortured soul, but at heart he was a good man and Sarah didn’t think there was anything that could ever make her doubt his love.

The next morning, after giving Kyle his antibiotics and more painkillers that weren’t anywhere near strong enough, they gathered up their few supplies and managed to hitch a ride. Once they’d been dropped off, it was another fifteen minutes of walking to get to her mother’s house - and Sarah was in no way prepared for what they found there.

The whole place was covered in crime scene tape, some of the windows were smashed, and when they went inside there was one of those chalk outlines on the floor. The house was trashed, there was blood spatter and shell casings. Looking around, not able to believe what she was seeing, Sarah noticed her address book of all things sitting there.

“The terminator came here,” Kyle remarked, watching as she slowly picked up the address book and stared at it.

Sarah couldn’t take this information. It wouldn’t find its way into her brain. In numb silence she rummaged the cupboards for food and then looked around for money. They’d need both those things…

They didn’t spend nearly as long at the house as she’d thought they would, instead hitchhiking south towards the border. Towards evening, they found an abandoned motel along the highway - it looked like there was a fire in one part and maybe there hadn’t been enough money to fix it, but the important thing was that nobody had been there in a long time. They had food for several days and plenty of cash again, so they could stay here for a little while and let Kyle recover some more.

After finding the least-dilapidated room and settling in it, Sarah finally took in what had happened to her mother. She sat down on the bed and burst into tears. Ginger and Matt were killed, her mom was killed. The thing that did it had been crushed into scrap by that press, but that didn’t make it better. She could be stuck like this the rest of her life, running and hiding from the authorities.

Kyle sat next to Sarah and pulled her into his arms, which saw her sobbing into his blood-crusted shirt until she was too tired to keep crying. Eventually she noticed him shaking again and realized she was causing him pain by clinging to his chest, so she pulled away and rubbed her face a little.

“I’m sorry, I’m making it hurt more…”

Kyle shook his head and hugged her again, resting his chin on top of her head. “I don’t care.”

Even after she brushed as much of the dust from the mattress and pillows as she could, Sarah still woke up coughing the next morning. Kyle was already up and about, getting the tylenol and antibiotics for himself instead of waiting for her. It made her wonder why, though, because they weren’t likely to be found here so they didn’t need to move and by extension he shouldn’t have seen the need to push himself so hard. Maybe he just couldn’t stand to feel helpless.

They had dry shredded wheat for breakfast, taking turns passing the box to each other and eating a handful. At one point, Kyle pulled out a fistful of cereal that also contained a cockroach, but instead of dropping the food and trying to stomp the bug he just calmly flicked it with his other hand, sending it flying across the room, and kept going with his meal.

“I’ve had to eat those before.”

“Gross,” Sarah couldn’t help replying. “Aren’t they horrible?”

“The legs feel a little strange when you first start chewing them. They’re not that bad.” Kyle jammed more shredded wheat into his mouth and somehow managed to talk around it. “This is a lot better, though.”

The idea of eating cockroaches made Sarah immediately and intensely nauseous. She ran for the bathroom (which of course didn’t have running water) and threw up into the sink because it was closer. Kyle followed her, one arm across his ribs because it hurt to move so fast, and looked absolutely terrified. Being shot and blown up fighting a killer robot hadn’t fazed him, but for some reason seeing her get sick seemed to be scaring him half to death.

“Are you okay?” Kyle demanded as she stood up and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand.

“Yeah, I’m fine… cockroaches are disgusting,” Sarah assured him.

She rinsed out her mouth with bottled water and laid down. This wasn’t a normal behavior for her, really - she’d gotten grossed out by things before, but never to the point of throwing up. Kyle laid down as well, pressed up from behind and wrapping her in his arms.

“You’re sure you’ll be okay?”

“Yes, I’m sure… why is it such a big deal?”

“Entire platoons have been killed by illnesses like this.”

“Kyle, I’m not sick, I’m going to be fine.” She could almost physically feel his fear, even though he didn’t say anything else about it. When she’d been sick as a kid, her mother always made her soup… thinking about that made her get sad again. Sarah wasn’t really crying, but there were tears leaking out. “Tell me about your family?” she asked.

“They died when I was a kid.” Kyle fidgeted a little. “The resistance broke everyone out of the camp I was sent to when I was about twelve… Perry kind of mentored me when I joined up, and later Connor did when I was reassigned to Tech-Com. The other soldiers ended up being my family, I guess. It was weird with John, though… he talked to me a little different than he did to other people. Sometimes he ate with me instead of with other officers. His daughter climbed on me a lot, too… she’s a good kid.”

“So not only do I have a son with some mysterious no-name at some point, but I’ll also have a granddaughter long after I’m already dead,” Sarah snorted. “This time travel is going to make me crazy.” Then she took a second to think over what he’d said, about how John was different to Kyle than to everyone else. It was such a strange detail… “So what did you mean about John being strange?”

“I don’t know. He just was. He always seemed sad whenever he was looking at me.” Kyle paused. “He knew, didn’t he? Somehow he knew he’d end up sending me… it’s why he gave me that picture.”

The thought she’d had before returned… John had specifically selected Kyle for this mission, long before the mission had even been necessary. There had to be a reason for that.

“How much did he tell you about me before you came here?” Sarah asked.

“A lot. Everyone heard stories about you. But there was other stuff, too. He said you had a shitty job and a pet lizard and things like that. Nobody else heard those stories but me.” He stroked her shoulder with his fingertips. “A couple years before we launched the final offensive against Skynet, he gave me that picture of you. I had a face for all his stories… it made me fall in love with you. I still almost can’t believe I actually came here and meet you for real.”

Probably other people would’ve found a more romantic way to tell her that, but there was warmth in his words now where his voice had been sad the first time he’d told her about the photo.

“So why do you think John did those things? It sounds kind of like he set you up for this on purpose.”

“To send me here.”

“But why you, specifically? He could’ve picked anyone, but it was you.”

“I don’t know. Do you think there’s a reason?”

“I think…” Sarah took a deep breath, considering the weight of the idea she was about to present him with. “I think it really couldn’t have been anyone besides you. Because you might be his father.”

She listened to Kyle’s silence for an impossibly long moment. When he finally said something, it was in denial.

“That can’t be right. He would’ve said something.”

“Would he?”

“He was always honest with everyone… John never asked anyone to go on a mission he wouldn’t do himself.”

“But how old was he when you met him?”

“Um… thirty four, I think. He was about to turn forty five when I got sent.”

“Okay, and how old are you now?”

“Twenty two.”

“Right. Can you see how that would be a problem if he _did_ tell you?” Sarah considered Kyle’s age. “You haven’t even been born yet.” This was making her head hurt - it meant everything was just going around in a circle, that Kyle would always be sent so he could father John and John could groom him to be sent. How had that even started in the first place?

“This can’t be right.” Kyle sounded beyond shocked. “I’m just a sergeant, I’m nobody important… he would’ve said something to me before he sent me…”

Sarah rolled over in his grip so they were facing. His eyes were wide and he’d gotten pale. “It makes sense, though.”

“But… but it can’t be me,” he protested. “John would’ve told me… he would’ve… he always told us the truth…”

Watching him, it made Sarah realize - “But I don’t want it to be anyone else.”

Now, Kyle just looked dumbstruck. “You don’t?”

She put a hand on the side of his face and kissed him. No, she didn’t want it to be anyone else but Kyle. His scars made him beautiful, his mental cracks made him perfect, his horror stories of the future got everything to make sense. Yes, he had no table manners or social skills, and he probably wouldn’t know to take his shoes off before going into somebody’s house, but Sarah didn’t think there was anything about him that she couldn’t love.

Kyle’s arms hugged her tighter - he wanted to be with her again, but they both knew he would hurt himself trying and needed to heal more. It was frustrating. He planted kisses all across her face: “I love you, Sarah.”

She kissed him back any way she could. “I love you, Kyle.”

**Author's Note:**

> Kyle's comment about an ammo can in his ribs is because in late October I had to have surgery on my chest and while I was healing, pain aside, it felt like there was bowling balls in my armpits for some reason I have yet to figure out.
> 
> Kudos/comments (comments especially!!!) are welcomed and encouraged.
> 
> If you enjoyed this work, please feel free to check out my original WIP, [Nucleus](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10027367).


End file.
